


Want, Need, Love

by sburbanite



Series: Hearts and Homes [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Falling In Love, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Meteorstuck, POV Karkat Vantas, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 02:09:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5809540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sburbanite/pseuds/sburbanite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Want?<br/>Need?<br/>Love?<br/>You don’t know what this is, and it’s driving an auger into your think-pan. </p><p>The events of <em>Love You Forever</em> from Karkat's perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Want, Need, Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reinkist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reinkist/gifts).



Want?

Need?

Love?

You don’t know what this is, and it’s driving an auger into your think-pan. If Dave was a troll you would have agreed on a quadrant, you would know where you stand instead of feeling like you’re being pulled down into quicksand. His breath is warm on your neck, and he’s letting out little shuddering sighs as he kisses it. You want to concentrate on that, on the feeling of his chest pressed against you, his warmth radiating through layers of fabric. Being so close to him for the first time is maddening, you feel sick with the sheer excitement of the moment, dizzy with the over-stimulation of _finally_ being touched like this. Your head is spinning with the speed of transitioning from longing looks and inappropriate daydreaming to feeling him, tasting him, breathing him in. 

One hand placed hesitantly on his was all it took, a signal clear enough that even Dave couldn’t miss it. You didn't need words to tell him that you wanted him to touch you, get closer to you. That it was OK.

Now that you’ve got him pinned while you straddle his lap, you don’t know what the fuck to do with him. Well…that’s not true, you know what you _want_ to do with him, but you sure as shit aren’t ready for that. You don’t think he is either, thankfully. Even so, you can feel yourself falling fast and hard into the roiling pit of heat and lust at the core of you. The part that throbs with an all-consuming red at the base of your thinksponge. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. This isn’t how it happens in your books and movies.

You weren’t supposed to spend perigrees of your afternoons stealing glances at him, nor spend almost as long convincing yourself that he wasn’t ever going to think of you as anything more than an angry, shouty, annoying friend. You weren’t supposed to gradually notice him breathing down your neck at every opportunity, curling up on the couch next to you so that your bodies almost touched. You weren’t supposed to realize that the attention he wanted so desperately was more than just bro-time; that he wanted to press his lips against yours until you couldn’t breathe.

And, right now, you aren’t supposed to be wondering what the fuck this all means; whether it’s just Dave’s stupid, flippant, annoying side taking the chance to experiment or whether it’s a genuine expression of his feelings for you. You’re pretty sure it’s the latter, Dave is iron-bar tense beneath you and his breath keeps coming out in stuttering little gasps. You kiss him some more, losing your train of thought as his tongue brushes gingerly over your fangs and you choke back the needy little noises in your throat. It’s awkward and hot and amazing and wet and neither of you have a clue what you’re doing, but you’d rather fuck yourself sideways with one of Rose’s knitting needles (with a half-made sweater still attached) than stop.

You gasp embarrassingly when he pulls away, wondering if you’ve gone too far, fucked things up somehow.

“Uh, can you move a little, man?” His voice cracks mid sentence, and now you know he’s every bit as lost as you are. That shouldn’t be reassuring, but it is.

Reluctantly, you shift away, breaking contact with his chest. You're cold without him.

“Thanks, I was getting a little, uh, uncomfortable. Sorry.”

You feel a chill run down your posture-pole, feel the warm fuzz in your think-pan melt like cotton candy dropped into a puddle of your own dismay fluid.

“Fuck,” you mutter, softly. You knew this was too good to be true.

Dave’s eyes focus on yours, a sliver of red showing above his shades. You’ve seen them before, once or twice, when he’s taken them off to watch a particularly dark movie. It never occurred to you that it was so he could watch your face in the husktop-glow. Right now, he can see the discomfort on it, he can sense the way your stomach is clenching with embarrassment. You fucked it up, you ruined everything. You made him uncomfortable.

“Karkat, look at me dude. I just meant, y'know, in my goddamn pants.”

Oh. That kind of uncomfortable. You’re not far behind to be honest, and the thought of staining your boxers red in front of Dave turns your face a matching shade.

While you’re worrying over that, Dave pulls you in and kisses you softly; a warm hand buried in your hair and a thumb brushing over one horn. He laughs into your mouth when it makes you squeak. You push him back angrily, but it’s hard to stay annoyed when he’s smiling at you like that, goofy and unguarded. You’ve never seen him like this before. It suits him.

“Is this…OK?” He asks, removing the shades completely so you can see his eyes, “I know I sorta threw myself at you.”

He takes a deep breath, breaks eye contact.

“We can stop if you want, pretend this never happened, whatever. I get it if it’s too weird for you, man.”

You roll your eyes and kiss him again, pushing your tongue into his mouth by way of an answer. It’s all the answer he needs.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unbelievably, you can feel yourself becoming comfortable with Dave’s hands on you. To begin with it’s your hands, your arms, your back. Places that you wouldn’t bleed to death if another troll clawed at you. Places you aren’t vulnerable. It takes a long time before he can touch your stomach, can put anything but his soft human lips on your neck. When he tries, a swirling panic fills your mind, screaming that if you let anyone close to you _they’ll find out, they’ll know, and you’ll be fucking dead_. It’s so stupid, everyone knows about your abhorrent mutant blood anyway, but it takes time to fight off the urge to flinch, to hide your weak spots. It takes time to let him in. 

The first time Dave takes off your shirt, you curl inward to try and hide the scars. His gaze burns you, bores into you, strips everything away. He can map your past in the lines from sickle training, battle scars from the game, places where you’ve intentionally spilled your stupid blood just to get that filthy shit out of your body. It hurts. You breathe again when he lifts his own shirt, reveals the network of faint lines all over his skinny torso. You’re the same, he’s just like you. Scarred and broken.

To you, he’s fucking perfect.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He won’t stop complimenting you. It’s irritating, he’s messing with you on some labyrinthine Striderian level that you can’t hope to understand. He laughs when you tell him that. You almost punch him in his stupid face, but he grabs your hand instead.

“Dude,” he says, giving you that infuriating smirk of his, “If I wanted to mess with you, I wouldn’t do it by telling you how cute your ass is.”

Eventually, you start to believe him. After a few perigrees, you stop flipping him off when he tells you how good you look in his shirts, how fucking adorable your bedhead is, how hot you are. None of it quite sinks in, but you tell yourself that’s OK. That it doesn’t matter what you think of yourself as long as _he_ sees this mythical, gorgeous creature when he looks at you. All you see is five-foot nothing of sullen rage with eyes full of anxiety. When he wakes up next to you each morning, limbs tangled in yours because Dave is a clingy sleeper, you don’t really care. You’re so fucking lucky, so happy just to be close to someone. You’re so glad that person is Dave.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sex with Dave is hard to describe. It’s awkward and sweaty and you think you both probably look like shit when you’re in the middle of it, but it’s so, so worth it. It’s worth it to see him ditch the coolkid shtick, to strip away the remains of his armor. When he’s underneath you, looking up at you like you could save his soul by curling your bulge inside him in just the right spot, you can almost believe the things he says about you. Dave sucks at romance, but when it comes to letting you know how he feels, his eyes tell you everything. It’s no wonder he hides them from everyone else. It fills you with heat and pride when you make him gasp out your name, when he squeezes shut those eyes that are just for you.

He’s inside you when he tells you that he loves you for the first time, and you have no fucking idea how to cope with that. A part of you goes into overdrive, building toward the most intense orgasm you’ve ever felt because, fuck, _Dave loves you_. Another part wants to slap him hard, to make him pay for ruining what should have been a perfect moment. There were meant to be rose petals and moonlight and fucking romance, for fuck’s sake. A few shitty alchemised candles, at least. You weren’t supposed to have your ankles crossed behind your boyfriend’s sweat-slicked back, pulling him deeper inside of you so that he can reach the place that feels really, really good. He’s not built for sex with you, but he makes up for it with enthusiasm and flexibility and tenderness, when he’s not babbling incoherently or spewing inappropriate love confessions. You’re so flushed for him it hurts.

It isn’t hard to forgive him. It’s even easier to say those words back at him.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You curse at yourself every time you let it get to you. Each and every time you remember that this is just temporary, that you’re going to die or he is, that you never deserved this in the first place, you end up taking it out on Dave. It isn’t fair, it’s spiteful and mean to push him away like this, it isn’t his fault he’s fucking immortal and you’re as useless as a chocolate sickle in a fight. You’re going to die. You’re going to get stabbed or crushed or just killed mistakenly by a blow meant for someone more important. You’re going to die, and the pain it will cause Dave is worse. You try to get him to stop caring about you, to finally get it through his thick human skull that you don’t deserve the affection he seems desperate to give you, but he won’t back off. He hugs you through the tears, holds you when you can’t breathe. He yells at you when you’re being an asshole, and you deserve every harsh word he dishes out.

In the end, when you’re weak and tired and you can’t fight anymore, he takes you in his arms, and the two of you fuck without looking into each other’s eyes. The touch is enough, just the feeling of him surrounding you. It almost makes you feel safe.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You’re silent when Kanaya tells you, her makeup smeared in black tear-tracks. He’s gone. Rose is gone. No-one knows where they are, but they didn’t come back. When she holds you, you’re stiff, remembering his arms around you. When you feel her sobbing, rough and raw, tears falling onto your shoulder, you remember that she lost someone too. The two of you stand together for a while, letting the tears come and go, the little part of your mind that’s screaming for him to pop out of nothing and for everything to be OK growing quieter with every minute. When everyone but the four humans you actually care about have gathered at Echidna’s cave so that she can release the embryonic Universe, the last flicker of hope that Dave is alive dies in your heart. Everyone else is occupied with their subdued victory; you won after all, even if you took an unacceptable loss.

You’re angry. Angry at them for celebrating, angry at Dave for dying, most of all, you’re angry at Karkat-fucking-Vantas. You couldn’t do shit, you were passed out in a cave while he died somewhere, all alone. Everyone turns to look when they hear your scream. They see you hopping on one foot and crying with pain and frustration, the broken foot drawn up against you. Kicking a diamond-hard crystal wasn’t your best idea, but at least the throbbing in your toes is a distraction from the sucking ache inside you.

Your stupid wings and cape are no recompense for having your blood-pusher torn out. Now that won’t even kill you, unless you do something shitty enough that the Universe decides it would be better off without you. Maybe you can goad Vriska into killing you. If you’re enough of a dick to her, reality might take pity on you and decide you deserve it. The only time in your miserable life that you’ve ever _wanted_ to die, and now you fucking _can’t_. As if fate would have it any other way.

You watch, broken, numb, dying inside, as the others prepare solemnly to claim their prize. The only thing you can feel is the fire of agony in your foot and Kanaya’s hand in yours.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He’s not dead, he’s not dead, he’s alive and he’s here and you can’t stop crying. You love him and you hate him, and all of your emotions flare and burn inside you, ignited by his touch. When he was gone, dead, you were too. Now that he’s alive you shudder back to life; you’re angry and happy and sad and relieved, so fucking relieved. You yell at him until your voice is hoarse, leave a stripe of red across his face with a claw when he makes a stupid joke. You hit him and hold him and kiss him and cry into his shirt. Stupid fucking asshole, you love him so much.

When it’s time, you walk through the gateway together, hand in hand.

He’s yours, forever, and you’re never letting him go again.


End file.
